Business columnist

When Leighton Holdings chairman Bob Humphris fronts the construction giant's annual general meeting on Monday it will mark the end of a turbulent era and the beginning of a massive overhaul of the global empire.

Since Leighton's major shareholder Hochtief made its move in March to increase its stake and board seats, a lot has happened at board level and in the senior management ranks.

Leighton, now 69.7 per cent owned by Hochtief, has lost its chief executive Hamish Tyrwhitt, its chief financial officer Peter Gregg and three independent directors.

But the real drama will begin after the annual meeting, when Hochtief, a German company, which in turn is controlled by Grupo ACS, a Spanish contracting giant, reveals some big plans for the company.

Leighton is the prize asset - it contributes more than 90 per cent of Hochtief's earnings and 40 per cent of ACS's group earnings - but the Spaniards want more. They also want to raise cash by selling assets to pay down debt.

From hereon it will use its new domination to sell various assets including its property division, equity stakes in companies including MacMahon Holdings and Devine and most importantly reconfigure the three key divisions - Leighton Contractors, Thiess and John Holland - to fit in with the overall ACS business structure.

The end game is that Thiess, Leighton Contractors and John Holland will be restructured so that they no longer compete with each other on tenders for key projects.

Instead, there will be one division that specialises in infrastructure, public private partnerships and civil engineering projects and another division that specialises in contract mining.

There is also industry talk that Leighton's services businesses will be bundled up and sold off to the highest bidder. There is also speculation that John Holland, which is the smallest of the three competing subsidiaries, will be sold to a foreign company.

Such radical changes will result in a much smaller and simpler construction giant, including a smaller workforce.

What is about to unfold has been likened to the Daleks in the British science fiction TV series Dr Who - an aggressive race of pepper shaker cyborgs who roll around threatening to "exterminate" anyone who gets in their way.

The Daleks have control and will use their force to help ACS become the biggest construction company in the world. Marcelino Fernandez Verdes, the new boss of Leighton, and who is also running Hochtief, will steer these changes. If he does a good job he will become the new boss of ACS following Florentino Perez's recent announcement of his plans to retire.

Verdes will front the Leighton annual meeting on Monday but it is not known how much he will reveal to shareholders.

What is known is that Leighton's turnaround is gathering momentum. It recently announced a net profit of $152 million for the March quarter, up 24 per cent. This is despite $5 billion worth of receivables, something Verdes will be keen to reduce.

It is understood he will begin talks with Chevron over the Gorgon Gas project in Western Australia, which could be worth $1 billion.

Then there is the troubled Middle East business, which it has to sort out, along with two class actions relating to continuous disclosure breaches and another possible class action being considered by Maurice Blackburn relating to allegations of foreign corrupt practices, which saw the share price fall 13 per cent.

Verdes will undoubtedly want to get rid of these quickly and concentrate on a string of big infrastructure projects that have been announced with the federal budget earlier this week.

At the end of the day Leighton will be subsumed into the Hochtief/ACS empire. It is not the first time Hochtief has proposed a merger with Leighton, but for various reasons it has never been able to pull it off.

Leighton has been under enormous pressure in the past few years after a series of projects blew up, along with allegations of bribery and corruption in the Middle East, class actions, an investigation by the corporate regulator and a blowout in its receivables.

This has put pressure on its share price and raised questions about its operating model.

The Spaniards felt Tyrwhitt and Gregg were not going fast enough and so moved to extricate them.

Like the Daleks, ACS pushes until there is no opposition.

It received some grief from Leighton in March last year when three Leighton directors, including chairman Stephen Johns, resigned suddenly citing corporate governance issues. A year later the problems have gone and ACS is about to rule.

In Australia, Leighton is the biggest construction industry. For years it has defended its high market share, claiming the independent multi-brand approach of Thiess, Leighton Contractors and John Holland has resulted in a robust competition with benefits to the community.

With a flood of infrastructure projects coming on to the market particularly building roads, maybe it is time for a change.